


syzygy

by valayun



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Allura (Voltron), Bisexual Keith (Voltron), Blade of Marmora Keith (Voltron), F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Galra Keith (Voltron), Minor Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Minor Hunk/Romelle (Voltron), Slow Burn, Tags May Change, Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt, straight Lance (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-07-01 09:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15771429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valayun/pseuds/valayun
Summary: allura expects to pilot the red lion; it chooses a galra soldier instead. things get complicated.





	1. parallax

Akira Kogane will never forget the last time his family is together.

A breeze blows through the canyons, carrying with it a gentle chill. The blaze of the setting sun paints the clouds like watercolor: a thousand hues of pinks, reds, oranges, and yellows spilt across an uneven canvas, streaks of greens and blues fading into the indigo sky.

Krolia stands outside one of the empire’s fighter pods, Keith sleeping in her arms, both bathed in gold. Akira looks at them and knows that this is a painful inevitability despite how long he and Krolia have tried to convince themselves otherwise.

Akira nearly forgot the strangeness of it all, this past year and a half out in the desert with a woman who fell from the stars, this life in an alien landscape with an alien lover, fifty miles removed from the nearest town. 

A halcyon dream, a hazy reverie.

They don’t belong here, his son and the woman he wishes he could call his wife. His brain scolds him for ever being foolish enough to believe they could stay. His heart aches for all the unrealities where they do.

 _”To protect you,”_ Krolia had reasoned. To protect a weapon, so a tyrant ten thousand years old and ten thousand galaxies away can’t use it to inflict pain on trillions of people on a scale Akira’s mind fails to comprehend.

 _”For Keith,”_ Krolia had gone on. To protect him from his own people. If Keith were to remain on Earth, he’d live his whole life under the shadow of the fear of being found, being taken, being dead or worse being some government agent’s secret science project subjected to unspeakable horrors. Not that Akira is foolish enough to believe he’ll see nothing worse in the face of war.

—a war _he_ is sending Keith to. How sickening. It’ll be his greatest sin, and Akira will spend endless lonely nights awake to begin to pay for it, he’s certain. He’ll wonder how he could do something so terrible to his own son, and he’ll remember that he did it for hope at something like freedom.

(If not for Keith, for whoever will come after.)

He’ll pray to whatever gods might be out there (he’s never known any) that he made the right choice, the one with an outcome he’ll be able to look back at some day in a peaceful future and call “worth it”.

He hopes that Keith will understand, even if he can’t forgive him.

Krolia smiles at Akira. The moon rises in the sky.

“Goodbye,” she says, like she isn’t already gone.

(Akira would never be able to forgive himself if he tried.)

* * *

_“Simulation failed.”_

All Lance can see are those words pulsing red in bold, glowing caps. His blood pounds in his ears. He’d barely made fighter pilot in the first place, and he’s been fucking it up ever since. 

Not that he’d admit that to anyone but himself. 

(And usually not even then).

“Nice work, _Tailor,”_ Pidge says flatly. 

Lance side-eyes him. _Great._ Even the nickname he’d given himself (in hopes of it catching on with the ladies) is biting him in the ass. 

The doors to the simulator hisses open. 

“Alright, get out,” calls a voice with a southern drawl. Commander Kogane, one of the flight instructors.

Lance lines up outside the sim with Pidge and Hunk, faces Kogane, and pretends that the gazes of his other classmates don’t feel like they’re drilling holes into his skull. The floor, Lance suddenly notices, is fascinating. 

(At least it’s Kogane today. Iverson has none of his patience. Lance imagines him salivating at the opportunity to tear Lance apart.)

“Can anyone point out the errors made by these three cadets?” Kogane asks the class.

A hand goes up. “The engineer puked in the main gearbox.”

Kogane nods. “What else?”

“The comm spec removed his safety harness.”

“The pilot crashed!”

“Correct. And most importantly,” Kogane says, turning to the three of them, “you were arguing the entire time. You must cooperate if you hope to ever fly real missions out in space, where your lives and the lives of others will be on the line.”

 _Or you’ll die like the men on the Kerberos Mission_ goes unspoken.

Pidge stiffens beside Lance. “Yes, sir,” he says.

“Next!”

* * *

“Lights out in five! Everyone back to their dorms, now.”

Lance peeks over the edge of the wall to see Kogane disappear down the hallway. It’s ten PM, aka curfew, aka the perfect time to get out and have some _real_ fun.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Hunk says from above Lance.

Pssh. “You heard Commander Kogane. We need to bond as a team.” Lance gestures vaguely with his hand. “We’re going to grab Pidge, hit the town, loosen up, meet some nice girls—”

“I’m just saying this here, right now, on the record. This is a bad idea.” Hunk sounds nervous. Too nervous. When’s this guy gonna learn to ease up a bit, huh?

The lights have blinked out. Now. Lance darts down the hall.

“You know, for someone in a space exploration program, you don’t have much of a sense of adventure,” Lance says.

The light from the instructors longue’s window is yellow-white up ahead. Lance drops to his knee, presses his shoulder up against the wall, and peeks inside. There’s a blonde dude looking at? a report? It’s something boring like that, but it seems to hold his attention, because he doesn’t notice Lance. Cool. Lance ducks under the window sill and crawls past.

He stops.

 _“Hey,”_ Hunk grunts, running into him. “What’s the hold-up?”

“Shit,” Lance whispers. “There’s a guard.”

Lance can hear the steady rhythm of the security guard’s boots as they’re coming up a perpendicular hall. If he can’t figure out something real fast, they’re gonna cross paths, and that’ll be the end of this trip. 

“Okay, great opportunity to turn back now!”

Hunk moves to go back down the way they came, but Lance grabs his wrist and motions for him to stop. Hunk’s eyebrows draw together, and he jerks his head back down the hall. Lance frowns and raises his chin at a pair of trash cans. Hunk shakes his head vigorously. Lance grins.

 

They wait until the guard passes to leave. Lance heads down the hall and darts behind the wall when a light flicks on in a doorway. A figure slips out.

Wait, is that _Gunderson_? His comms officer? What’s he doing here? He doesn’t seem like the type to sneak out at night. More of a geek type than a player—like Lance.

Pidge hurries off in the same direction Lance had been going, backpack hefted over his shoulders. 

“Where is _he_ going?” Lance says. Hunk shrugs.

 

Lance and Hunk find him under the stars on the roof of the Galaxy Garrison, wearing headphones, sitting in a crescent of clunky-looking computers. Lance creeps closer. Pidge’s eyes are shut. Whatever it is he’s doing, he must really be in the zone, because he doesn’t notice Lance even when he’s right behind him. 

Maybe it’s music? Going off by yourself to listen to weird indie music seems like a geek thing to do.

Lance creeps up and lifts his headphones away. “You come up here to rock out?”

Pidge jerks away with a gasp, eyes widening. He tenses.

“Oh, Lance, Hunk. No, um, just looking at the stars.”

“Where’d you get this stuff? It doesn’t look like Garrison tech,” Lance says.

Pidge smirks. “I built it.”

Hunk reaches out to touch a keyboard. “ _You_ built all of _this?”_ he asks.

“Stop it!” Pidge slaps his hand away. “With this thing, I can scan all the way to the edge of the solar system.”

Lance rubs his chin thoughtfully. “That right? All the way to Kerberos?”

Pidge shrinks away.

“You go ballistic every time the instructors bring it up. What’s your deal?”

Hunk fiddles with a big dish affixed to Pidge’s computer.

“Second warning, Hunk!” Pidge barks—if you could call it barking. Pidge reminds Lance of his aunt’s Chihuahua: little and feisty but not enough to actually sink its teeth into your arm.

Hunk hums his apparent resignation.

“Look, Pidge, if we’re going to bond as a team, we can’t have any secrets,” Lance pries.

Pidge’s shoulders slump. He turns to look at Lance. “Fine. The world as you know it is about to change. The Kerberos Mission wasn’t lost because of some malfunction or crew mistake—stop touching my equipment!

“So, I’ve been scanning the system and picking up alien radio chatter.”

“Woah, what? Aliens?” Hunk says.

No freaking way. Lance crosses his arms.

“Okay. So you’re insane. Got it.”

“I’m serious,” Pidge snaps. “They keep repeating one word—” He holds up a notebook and taps a drawing of a crudely-drawn, vicious alien. “ _Voltron_. And tonight, it’s going crazier than I have _ever_ heard it.”

Lance raises an eyebrow. “How crazy?”

 _“Attention, students. This is not a drill. We are on lockdown! Security situation Zulu Niner. Repeat: all students are to remain in barracks until further notice,”_ Iverson’s voice echoes up from the speakers on the ground.

“What’s going on?” Hunk says. His eyes widen, and he points up at the now bright sky. “Is that a meteor? A very, very big meteor?”

The object burns orange as it hurtles towards the earth. Pidge pulls out his binoculars.

“It’s a ship.” 

Lance snatches the binoculars away and puts them to his eyes. “Holy crow! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! That’s not one of ours.”

“No. It’s one of _theirs.”_

A chill runs down Lance’s spine.

_Aliens._

“So, wait. There really are aliens out there?” Hunk asks as they watch the ship, trailing fire, crash behind a hill. Several rovers file out from the building they sit on, like ants in pursuit.

“We’ve got to see that ship!” Pidge says, already running.

“Hunk, come on!” Lance says, hot on Pidge’s heels.

 

Lance turns the knob on Pidge’s binoculars so that he can get a better view of the ship from the top of the hill. It’s a misshapen fuselage-thingy made of dull gray metal. The sides and top are lined with lights such a bright violet they’re almost white. 

“Whoa! What the heck is that thing?” He shifts his sights a few meters down to focus on an older officer. He bites his lip. “And who the heck is _she_?”

Pidge’s _“Lance!”_ in his ear radiates almost as much exasperation as the smack to Lance’s ear hurts.

“Ow!” he cries. “Right, alien ship. Man, we’ll never get past all of those guards to get a look.”

“Aw, man. Yeah, yeah, I guess there’s nothing to do but head back to the barracks, right?”

“Wait. They set up a camera in there, and I grabbed its feed. Look!”

Men in hazmat suits crowd a man strapped to a metal examining table.

_Holy hell. Is that—-?_

The man’s voice comes over the static. _“Hey, what are you doing?”_

Then Iverson: _“Calm down, Shiro. We just need to keep you quarantined until we run some tests.”_

_“You have to listen to me! They destroy worlds! Aliens are coming!”_

Lance recognizes the man despite the metal arm and white forelock and ragged shirt and jumpsuit. He would have recognized him regardless of pretty much whatever could have happened to him, because that’s Takashi Shirogane.

“That’s Shiro! The Pilot of the Kerberos Mission!” Lance points out. “That guy’s my hero!”

The guy Lance has looked up to since the day he visited Lance’s middle school class to recruit for the Garrison.

Lance still remembers his public funeral.

“Guess he’s not dead in space, after all,” Hunk says.

“Where’s the rest of the crew?” Pidge says.

 _“Do you know how long you’ve been gone?”_ Iverson asks Shiro.

_“I don’t know. Months? Years? Look, there’s no time. Aliens are coming here for a weapon. They’re probably on their way. They’ll destroy us. We have to find Voltron.”_

“Voltron!” Pidge says.

“Voltron?” It’s Kogane. His tone doesn’t match Iverson’s.

_“It’s a weapon. I don’t know. We have to find it!”_

_“Sir, take a look at this. It appears his arm has been replaced with a cyborg prosthetic.”_

_“Put him under until we know what that thing can do,”_ Iverson orders.

_“No. No. No—no—don’t put me under! No! There’s no time! Let me go!’_

_“Mitch!”_ Kogane says. _“Wait.”_

_“Wait for what, Akira?”_

Kogane puts himself between Iverson and Shiro. _“Maybe we should hear him talk,”_ he says.

_“Absolutely not. We will do nothing until we secure this Galaxy Garrison.”_

Iverson shoves past Kogane and reaches for a syringe.

“They didn’t ask about the rest of the crew,” Pidge says, looking up at Lance and Hunk. 

“What’re they doing? The guy’s a legend, they’re not even going to listen to him?” Lance says.

“We have to get him out,” says Pidge.

“Uh, I hate to be the voice of reason here, but weren’t we watching on TV because there was no way to get past the guards?” Hunk asks.

“That,” Lance says, gears turning in his head. “was before we were properly motivated. We’ve just got to think. Could we tunnel in?”

“Maybe we could get some hazmat suits and sneak in like med techs,” suggests Pidge.

“ _Oooor_ we dress up like cooks, head back to the dorms, sneak into the commissary—“ Hunk gestures with his hands. “—little late night snack.”

“No. What we need is a distraction,” Lance says.

Sirens shriek, tearing through the air and splitting Lance’s eardrums. He claps his hands over his ears, cringing.

“What is _that?”_

“Is that the aliens—is that the aliens? Are they here? They got here so quick!”

“Those are the alarms,” Pidge says. “They’re coming from the far east building—on the other side from where Shiro is. Look!” He points. “All those Garrison guys are moving over there.”

“What set them off?” Hunk asks.

“Who cares? This is our shot,” Lance says, already scrambling down the hill, spraying gravel. “C’mon!”

 

Lance isn’t exactly sure what he was expecting to find, but it wasn’t Commander Kogane standing over the bodies of (passed-out—hopefully—probably—Kogane is a nice guy) several officers in hazmat suits, wiping sweat off his brow, visibly panting.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Lance says. Hunk and Pidge bump up behind him.

Kogane stares. “Garcia? Akana? Gunderson? You shouldn’t be here. What’re you doing?”

Lance and Kogane make eye contact for a long, painful second before Kogane dashes to Shiro’s side to fiddle with the locks on his restraints.

“We’re here to save Shiro,” Lance announces, joining Kogane at Shiro’s opposite side.

“What are _you_ doing here?” Pidge says to Kogane. “What’s everyone doing on the ground? Did you do this? Are you the one who set off the alarms?”

“Y’know, guys, _maybe_ we shouldn’t be interrogating him,” Hunk says.

Kogane seems to ignore them altogether. He kneels down, pulls Shiro’s robot arm over his shoulder, and tilts his chin at Lance.

“Can you get his other arm for me?” he says.

Lance nods vigorously.

Together, Lance and Commander Kogane manage to haul Shiro off the table and a little ways outside. A bike hovers a few inches off the ground at the foot of the hill. Lance’s muscles burn. _So far away,_ at least like this.

Lance glances at Shiro’s face. It’s different: leaner, gaunter, smeared with sweat and grime, cut across by a scar not yet faded.

Still Shiro.

Hunk groans. “Oh man, you see that? They’re coming back.”

He’s right. Kogane’s precious few minutes of borrowed time are ending. Lance’s hands are preoccupied with propping up Shiro, so he can only squint against the white-yellow glare from the lights of the Garrison trucks in the distance rushing towards them. The bike is still far off.

“What’re we going to do?” Pidge calls over his shoulder.

Lance looks to Kogane to lead. (It’s not like Lance had had any plan in the first place.)

(He’s not sure Kogane had one either).

Kogane’s mouth hardens into a thin line. “We won’t make it at this rate. You kids take Shiro. My bike is already running, so Garcia, you’ll be able to fly it.”

Lance straightens up into the best salute he can manage. “Yes, sir!”

“Akana, c’mere,” Kogane says, slowing down. He shifts Shiro onto Hunk’s shoulder before jogging awkwardly alongside him.

“There’s a shack out west in the desert, with a map. Go there, and you’ll find Voltron,” he says, barely loud enough to be heard above the roar of engines, then rattles off a series of numbers Lance doesn’t catch.

“Can you repeat all that, please, sir?” Lance calls, but Kogane has already fallen too far behind to hear. He faces the oncoming Garrison officers now only yards away. _Damn. That guy’s gonna get himself killed._

“I got it!” Pidge shouts, hopping onto the back of the bike, a little gray and black rectangle in hand.

Lance helps Hunk lift Shiro onto the bike, swings himself up into the seat, and hits the gas. The hoverbike lurches forward, knocking the breath out of him, and shoots across the terrain at what the speed dial tells Lance is nearly seventy miles an hour.

“Oh _hell_ yeah!” Lance yells. “Hey, Hunk, is Commander Kogane still back there?”

He knows that with every passing second they speed further away from the Garrison, their chances of rescuing Kogane diminish, and that it was him who told them to go without him, but he can’t help but feel at least a little guilty for leaving him in the dust.

“I don’t see him. I think he—”

_BOOM!_

Hot air lifts the bike up and drives it forward like a wave cresting in a bay. Lance glances back.

Plumes of fire lick the night sky. Garrison trucks in burning, smoking shreds. Kogane, nowhere to be seen.

“Nevermind,” he says, and slams the gas as hard as he can.

* * *

Pidge plugs in the coordinates Kogane gave them into his GPS; the four of them arrive at an aging shack in the middle of nowhere just as pre-dawn light bleeds across the sky and washes the orange terrain around them out to a gray moonscape. The interior of the shack is all dust and drawn curtains and untended junk except for a yellowed map of Arizona pinned to the wall. A scrawled red “X” marks the spot.

“There,” Lance says, pointing. “That’s gotta be Voltron.”

So they go.

* * *

”Who are you? Where am I?”

“I’m Lance. And you’re right here in my arms.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gonna keep it real here this fic is 100% me being self-indulgent but i hope some of you guys enjoy it too
> 
> i've actually been working on it on and off since before season six came out so it feels really good to have some of it finally published! super exciting especially because i've never written anything long or with a plot before lmao. it's planned to be sort of a series rewrite.
> 
> haven't figured out an update schedule yet. the next couple chapters are already outlined so hopefully it'll be within a week or two but i'm a busy busy person so we'll see how it goes. in the meantime come talk to me on tumblr :)
> 
> next chapter is from allura's pov!


	2. redshift

_Please._

“Father!” Allura gasps, reaching for the light. 

Where is he? 

Where is he?

He was just here!

_Please, don’t go._

She falls.

She crashes into something warm and soft and smelling like salt on the seabreeze. No, not something—some _one_. Allura grips their arm and lifts her head to meet the face of an Altean boy she has never seen before in her life. Her head feels fuzzy, like it’s been packed full of feathers.

“Hello,” he says, blush fading, face contorting into a sultry expression Allura might have found funny were she not so disoriented.

“Who are you?” Allura asks. “Where am I?” 

She turns her head. _The Castle? Three more Alteans?_

“I’m Lance,” he answers. “And you’re right here in my arms.”

_No._

Allura frowns. “Your ears,” she says. “They’re round.”

And Lance’s cheeks are an even brown, unmarked by the characteristic crescents of Allura’s people. Lance is not Altean at all.

_Strange._

“Yeah?” Lance sounds confused.

“They’re hideous,” Allura says, pulling away. “What’s wrong with them?”

_Perhaps even dangerous._

“Nothing’s wrong with them! They heard exactly what you said about them! _Wh—_ ” Lance breaks off with a scream when Allura grabs one of those ears, spins him with it, and forces him to his knees.

“Who are you? Where is King Alfor? What are you doing in my castle?” she demands.

“A giant blue lion brought us here! That's all we know!”

Her mind races. Blaytz took them? No. Blaytz is not here. And Lance made it sound like it was the lion alone.

Something is terribly wrong.

Allura looks up to speak to the three other—whatever Lance is. “How do you have the Blue Lion? What happened to its paladin? What are you all doing here? Unless…” It dawns on her and strikes cold fear deep into her heart.

“How long has it been?”

The only adult (but then, that’s by Altean standards) speaks, a boy in a headband cowering behind him.

“We don't know what you're talking about. Why don't you tell us who you are? Maybe we can help.”

Allura knows _far_ too well how deceiving appearances can be, but this man’s face and voice—good intention lays in them—and her gut tell her she can trust him.

If her suspicions are true, she must.

“I am Princess Allura of Planet Altea,” she says, moving to the command terminal to wake Coran. “I've got to find out where we are and how long we've been asleep.”

The short one blinks at the terminal screen. “Okay, that's how that works.”

All it takes is a few swipes across the screen for the cryopod’s shell to dissolve. Coran leaps out shouting. Allura squints at the screen and tunes out Coran and Lance’s racket behind her in favor of the only questions on her mind.

The computer beeps. The numbers that appear shatter her life and stop her heart for the second time in—well, it seems to have been much, _much_ longer than a few days.

“It can't be,” she says.

“What is it?”

“We've been asleep for ten thousand decaphoebs.”

_If all goes well, I will see you again soon. I love you._

He wouldn’t.

Her father, her mother, her friends, her family, her kingdom, her planet, tens of millennia of culture, billions upon billions of people spread across the stars—obliviated.

(The warmth in her father’s hugs, Fala’s laughter, the sour candies bought at the spring festivals in the streets of Raimon, the sight and scent of juniberries so pink and sweet in bloom, the towering alabaster temples to the ancients, the melody of spoken Altean—) 

Erased.

Gone.

Dead.

Wholly.

Fully.

_Forever._

“Planet Altea and all of the planets in our solar system have been destroyed. Coran, Father is gone. Our entire civilization…”

And she knows who is responsible.

(Someone she once considered family.)

Her blood boils.

“Zarkon.”

* * *

Voltron is the only thing that can save them now.

...piloted by these sorry excuses for paladins, who seem like incompetent children. Save for the tall one.

(Plus her, of course).

* * *

“And I will pilot the red lion,” Allura says, wavering, a little less confident than when she assigned the other new paladins their lions.

It _has_ to be her, right? Even though each paladin’s soul is made from the same quintessence as their lion—Shiro from black, Lance from blue, Hunk from yellow, Pidge from green—and hers glows white instead of red, it’s what makes the most sense. She has the instincts, the drive, the fire. Most importantly, the red lion is—was her father’s lion.

She must walk in his footsteps. She must live up to his legacy. To do anything else would be to fail him.

And she cannot fail.

First, however, she must find Red.

* * *

Finding the red lion on a galra ship hits her like a punch to the gut. They couldn’t just take her father’s life and his planet and his people. They had to take his lion, too.

The ship orbits Arus: a mostly-uninhabited planet, on the outskirts of what had been Altean territory, where Allura slumbered in her castleship for an eternity—that is, where they are now.

The particle barrier is the only thing standing between the castle and being vaporized by this _Sendak_ ’s ion cannon. It cannot shield them forever, only long enough for her to choose her next move.

 _Fight_ or _flight_.

Lance and Hunk try to convince Pidge that they must leave, like it’s their decision to make. Shiro interjects.

“Guys, stop! Princess Allura, these are your lions. You've dealt with the Galra Empire before. You know what we're facing better than any of us. What do you think is the best course of action?”

“I… I don’t know,” she says, looking to the ground.

Her father’s pragmatism warns her that only three lions, piloted by clueless paladins, will inevitably fall in the face of the might of a galra warship, but Allura has tired of running. Her father’s choice to run left her to wake in a universe where Zarkon holds absolute power over every planet he’s ever touched. If they are to flee, Arus will join that endless list of worlds.

But that could happen even if they stay.

“Perhaps your father can help,” Coran says.

Allura turns to him. “My father?”

 

Coran leads her along winding corridors deep into the hold of the castle until they reach a room whose ceiling fades into the dark.

“Coran,” Allura says. Her voice echoes as she crosses a catwalk to reach the pedestal in the center. “What is this?”

“King Alfor knew there was a chance he might never see you again. So, his memories, his very being, were stored in this computer for you.”

A pinpoint of blue light appears over the pedestal, a star in the shadows. Allura reaches for it tentatively, watches it jump and then all at once burst like a supernova, a field of green grass and juniberries materializing in its wake. Allura turns round to watch white-cotton clouds, lazily cresting mountains that pierce the blue summer sky, the Altean countryside vivid as she recalls it from memories both quintants and millennia old.

She sees him.

Allura gasps and rushes forward. Hot tears well up and threaten to trickle down her smile.

“Father! Father, it is so good to see you.”

Not quite him—her father was made of flesh, blood, quintessence, and psyferite armor, not a construction of blue light; this is his ghost. Yet it’s also his mind preserved—on some level, really him. 

“Allura, my only child, how I've missed your face.”

She drops nearly to her knees.

“I’m so frightened. A galra ship is set to attack, and I don't know what to do. Please, Father, I need your help.”

“I would do anything to take this burden from you,” he says.

It weighs so crushingly, the selfish part of Allura wishes he could. She slumps against the beveled edge of the pedestal.

“I don't know if we should run to preserve what we have or stay and risk everything. I want to fight, but the paladins of old are gone. I know what you would do,” she says.

“I scattered the Lions of Voltron to keep them out of Zarkon's hands. You urged me to keep them and fight, but for the greater good of protecting the universe, I chose to hide them.”

She’ll follow his path. “I think I understand.” 

Of course.

“No, daughter, you were right,” her father says, to her shock. “I made a terrible mistake, one that cost the universe countless lives. Forming Voltron is the only way to stop Zarkon. You must be willing to sacrifice everything to assemble the lions and correct my error.”

Allura meets her father’s hologram eyes.

She understands.

Just as she gets up to go, doubt creeps up her spine and chills her bones.

“Father,” she says, looking back over her shoulder, “I am uncertain that I am meant to pilot your lion. My quintessence is not red.”

He wears a strange expression that she recognizes from hard conversations about Zarkon and Honerva and the future but cannot read.

“The lions are complex, Allura, more than you know. It’s not so simple as just making things match. You will be certain when the time comes.”

A pause. Allura nods.  


Now, they fight.  


“You four paladins were brought here for a reason. The Voltron Lions are meant to be piloted by us and us alone. We must fight and keep fighting until we defeat Zarkon. It is our destiny. Voltron is the universe's only hope. _We_ are the universe's only hope.”

Her speech conveys a confidence Allura does not possess.

“We’re with you, Princess,” Shiro says.

She takes them to the armory, turns on lights burning Altean cyan. The sets of armor lined up in tubes on the dais appear different than when she had last seen them. The castle algorithms must have worked out a more effective design these past millennia. 

Allura takes small comfort in that. Even though the original sets are long lost with their paladins anyway, it feels a little less like she’s replacing their previous owners. (She is).

“Our suits of armor,” she says.

“Cool!”

“Outstanding.”

“Oh, neat!”

“Hmm... Mmm... hmm.”

Coran fiddles with his mustache. With his voice lowered, he says, “Princess, are you sure about this? They aren't exactly the best and brightest the universe has to offer.”

He’s right. She pretends her body doesn’t want to shake.

“No, but they're all we've got.”

“Paladins, it’s time to suit up!” Shiro calls.

Allura watches her warped reflection pull the red armor on over her jumpsuit and her hair into a high bun. The armor shrinking to fit the contours of her figure makes her feel less like an imposter in her father’s place. She exhales a stuttering breath. 

She can do this.

A few minutes later, four bayards float above their case, waiting.

“The bayard is the traditional weapon of the paladins of Voltron. It takes a distinct shape for each paladin,” she says. She takes hers from the air, as do the others.

The red bayard flashes white, forming a psyferite tip. It’ll reveal a whip, Allura is sure, but she can’t exactly test it out in here.

She turns. “Shiro, I'm afraid your bayard was lost with its paladin.”

 _Zarkon._ She cannot let them know, cannot yet test their fragile loyalty. (Cannot reopen her own still-weeping wounds). She hopes they will be able to forgive her for this secret.

“I guess I'll just have to make do,” he says with raised eyebrows and a smile.

 

“We’ll need to retrieve the red lion from Sendak’s ship,” Allura announces on the bridge. “Once I get in, the red lion will guide me to itself.”

“How’s that gonna work?” Hunk says.

“I will be able to feel its presence, as all of you should with your own lions.” That leaves her with a few blank stares. Allura frowns. Now isn’t the best time to explain the intricacies of quintessence bonds, already challenging to articulate, if they haven’t already picked up on them. “You will see,” she says instead.

“All right. Here’s our plan of attack,” Shiro says.

 

 _It’s a terrible plan_ , Allura thinks, watching Sendak’s looming warship from the cockpit of the green lion. 

This—everything is so tenuous. One real pilot among the paladins, most of whom are children. Allura has had training in piloting, but as a princess, not a soldier. Her knowledge of flying in fighting is limited to diagrams on holo screens and clips of the paladins’ escapades. And she’s barely past eighteen decaphoebs. (At least she’s been rigorously trained in hand-to-hand combat. She can only hope the others were, too. Didn’t they attend a military academy?)

They’re doomed.

_It’s the best we’ve got._

Pidge attaches his lion to the hull of Sendak’s ship, slices a hole in the ship’s armor, and jams in Green’s head.

The idea had been for Lance and Hunk to offer their lions up to Sendak as decoys while Allura and Shiro snuck into find Red with Pidge acting as transport and backup, but, judging by the shouting striking her ears from her comms, Allura realizes that plan’s gone down the drain.

Just a few minutes in, too. Somehow, she isn’t surprised. She prays that the castle’s particle barrier will hold.

“I’ve been here before,” Shiro says, scanning the hall. “After I was taken by the galra cruiser off Kerberos, they brought us here.”

 _Oh_. To be back here must cause Shiro great pain, yet he shows no hesitation. Allura admires him—a worthy successor to the man Zarkon once was.

“So, that means your other crew members, they might be held captive here. We... We've got to rescue them,” Pidge says, frantic.

“Pidge, we don't have time. We have to get the red lion and get back to Arus.”

“But we can't just leave prisoners here!” Pidge insists. Allura recognizes that drive, that empathy. He’s right. A good paladin must do everything they can to save as many innocent lives as possible.

“Shiro. Do you remember where the prisoners are kept?” she asks.

“Uh… Yes,” Shiro says. “I do.”

“Good. Then, Pidge,” Allura says, placing her hand on his shoulder. “Go with Shiro. Free the prisoners. I will find the red lion alone.”

She will not permit any more lives to be sacrificed to the galra.

“Princess,” Shiro says. “You sure about this?”

She meets his gaze. “Absolutely. Go now.”

A beat passes, the air taut. Then they run off down the corridor, leaving Allura with nothing but the echo of their fading footfalls and Hunk’s and Lance’s shouts crackling in her ears. Sweat collects at the back of her neck.

She closes her eyes.

_Focus. Feel the quintessence that fuels the red lion’s heart._

She reaches out.

The red lion does not flinch at her touch, but he does not return it, either. Temperamental as always.

But the contact is enough for her to determine his location. She sprints down the passage, opposite the way Shiro and Pidge went, each wall light and galra-skull insignia melting into a haze of hot violet.

Allura pants. Ten thousand decaphoebs haven't degraded her body, but they haven't exactly strengthened it either.

 _Ten thousand decaphoebs asleep._ Will she ever get over that? Is that something you can get over? It’s not like anyone else would know. 

Allura pushes it out of her mind. She has a mission.

Left here, right here, this way, that way. The red lion’s heart beats louder in her ears as she approaches, nearly imperceptible beneath her own.

Finally, she arrives.

(Alone. Allura takes it to mean that the ancients smile down upon her.)

A particle barrier guards Red, says _you may hold me captive, but you’ll never be able to touch me_ , not without his permission. 

So Allura goes to ask.

Tentatively, she reaches out with both palms. Faint humming quintessence snaps at her skin even through her gloves. She settles her hands on the barrier, shuts her eyes, and bows her head in something like a prayer.

“Please,” she whispers.

Lasers fire over Shiro’s orders over Hunk’s shouts in her ears. The clock ticks.

No acknowledgment.

Nothing.

Part of her expected this.

 _I am uncertain_.

The other part grits her teeth and slams her fists against the shield while her throat closes up and she tastes warm saltwater on her tongue.

“Please,” she begs. “I _must_ do this.”

_You will know when the time comes._

Failure, failure, failure.

The doors slide open behind her with a hiss. Galra soldiers, she knows. She has what, fifteen ticks left? It would be tragic for Altea’s last princess to survive ten millennia of Zarkon’s reign only to fall to his cannon fodder.

“Paladins, I need your assistance!” Allura shouts into her comm, summoning the red bayard. The lower half of her visor rematerializes.

One moment, all she knows is blinding light and a boiling heat that’d vaporize anything but psyferite. The next, she’s flung head-over-heels into the silent, freezing dark.

Allura clutches at her helmet. White stars, purple light, orange laser fire, black void, Blue, Yellow, and Green blur together. Her jetpack sputters against the momentum that has her flying away from Sendak’s ship. Between constellations, she catches glimpses of its gaping wound, a short crevasse running lengthwise along its side. Galra soldiers drift lifeless around it, backlit in flashing scarlet.

Her jetpack stabilizes. Allura slows until the spinning halts and she’s upright in relation to the cruiser a few thousand feet away. A galra pod darts past her. Fifteen more follow. (Why haven’t they seized her?)

“Fantastic job, paladins!” she calls. “Do you read me? I’ve been knocked out of Sendak’s ship. I need one of you to pick me up immediately.” 

Allura wonders which one of them made the hit on the cruiser. Lance, the pilot? It’s the only logical conclusion. It pleases Allura to know he’s better than she expected.

“Uh—we read you, Princess,” Hunk says, sounding strained. “We’re just uh—a little preoccupied at the _moment! Oh God!_ Whew! That was a close one!”

Allura swerves to dodge a stray laser. The galra should have shot her a hundred times over in the past few ticks. She wonders what’s stopping them.

She spots it just as Pidge does.

“Hey guys! Look over there,” Pidge says.

“How’re we supposed to know where ‘there’ is, Pidge?” Lance says.

“Oh, I see it,” says Hunk. 

The first pod that just passed her by isn’t leading the others, it’s being pursued. It zips tightly around the cruiser, dipping and weaving around spurts of laserfire in quick, smooth motions. Holes appear in the ship where the attacking pods miss their shots.

“Does anyone know what’s going on?” Lance asks. “ _Whoa!_ ”

Between the rogue pod, the castle, and the lions, the galra are occupied. It won’t last long. This isn’t a battle they can win without Voltron. Without Red.

Allura reaches out again, holds her breath. Waits.

Nothing. _Quiznack._

She opens her eyes to see that the rogue pod’s gone into a tailspin, right wing blasted clean off. It crashes into Sendak’s cruiser and erupts into an orange explosion.

Allura doesn’t know what to make of it.

An insurgent? Someone with a death wish? Even a malfunctioning sentry (unlikely given the deftness of the pilot, but possible)? She’ll probably never find out—

A galra soldier slams into her, sending them both flying. Allura shrieks.

“Allura!” Coran cries. “Are you alright?”

“No! I’m—there’s a _galra_ on my _arm_!”

They have an iron hold on her, too, claws scraping against her armor as the two of them swing around an invisible axis. (Allura remembers spinning with Fala in the gardens, hands on each other’s forearms, faster, faster—) 

“Don’t touch me!” she demands, despite knowing they won’t be able to hear and wouldn’t care if they could. Allura glances up at them while her fingers work at prying theirs off. Their visor is dimmed so she can’t see their face, but she can imagine the snarl and empty golden eyes.

“Someone will get you!” Coran says. “Isn’t that right, paladins?”

“Uh, yeah, _someone_ definitely is coming to get you,” Hunk says. 

The galra doesn’t put up much of a fight after Allura frees herself from their grip. Or any fight at all, actually. She shoves them a few feet away from her and they barely react, just clench their fists and look over their shoulder towards Sendak’s ship.

Except they’re probably not looking at Sendak’s ship at all. They’re probably looking at the same thing Allura is: the red lion hurtling out of the cruiser and heading straight towards them.

_Finally._

The red lion opens its jaw.

Allura was wrong to doubt after all. Her father’s lion has come to save her, and she’ll be its paladin, and they’ll be able to form Voltron, and they’ll topple the empire, beginning here by destroying Sendak.

But Red closes its mouth around the galra, its eyes glowing gold behind their silhouette before they disappear.

And Allura’s alone in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> great way to meet the love of ur life amirite folks  
> (yes that's keith)
> 
> sorry for taking so long to update. shit happens. not sure when the next one will be. hopefully within a month. next chapter is from allura's and keith's povs! possibly also one of the garrison trio? we'll see.
> 
> in the meantime, talk to me in the comments or on tumblr (@jegudielwrites)! :)


	3. azimuth (part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i changed the last couple of lines of the last chapter a while back so if you haven't read them maybe do that

Allura just stares at Red for what feels like an eternity before it lunges forward and snaps her up too. 

Artificial gravity kicks in. Allura lands gracefully on the floor, albeit panting.

It’s just the two of them, alone in the red light of the cockpit.

Her. The galra.

The galra sits in the pilot’s chair, a few feet away, where her father once sat, defiling it. Her blood boils.

She moves towards them, summoning the red bayard. They jump up and turn to face her, hands held out, one gripping a knife in reverse. Allura sees her own face in the black crystal surface of their visor.

Allura looks the soldier up and down. They’re wearing a different sort of armor than the galra who came for her on Sendak’s ship, and they’re taller and more muscled than she is. They might be stronger than her, they might not. Altean martial art prioritizes agility and efficiency over brute raw power, but Allura doesn’t know if it’ll be enough when the situation inevitably comes to a fight.

Stars flicker past the windows. Allura wonders where they’re going. Somewhere away from Sendak’s cruiser, she thinks.

“Princess? Are you alright?” Coran calls.

“At the moment, yes,” she says, edging towards the pilot’s seat. The galra shuffles back. “I’m in Red. There’s a galra soldier here. We’ve yet to engage. Can you read me the lion’s velocity?”

“I—er, right. You’re set to land twenty degrees north of the Arusian equator in, oh... ten doboshes?”

Ten doboshes to knock out a galra soldier, reclaim the red lion, and find somewhere safe for her to land. _Fantastic._

“Thank you, Coran. Get the castle ready to jump.”

“I—I want to help,” rasps the galra, voice muffled by his? his visor. “Whatever _this_ —” He gestures vaguely with the empty hand. “I need to be a part of it.”

“Take off your helmet,” she orders. She won’t speak to a mask. It’ll be easier to get a hit in.

He reaches up, hesitates. 

The knife clatters to the ground. 

He pops off his helmet. 

Glossy, midnight-dark hair spills out and falls around an angular lavender face, marked by faint half-crescents that widen down from his cheeks to his chin. His brows are drawn together, lips twisted into a frown. Allura’s eyes meet slit-pupiled ones, black on indigo-gray on a field of gold. He lowers his gaze to the floor.

Allura’s gut churns at the sight of him. She takes a step forward. “Who are you?” she says, fingers clenching around the handle of her bayard.

He looks back at her. “Yurak, pilot, fighter squadron Djalg six,” he intones. “But I’m a traitor. I’m—I hate the empire. You’re from Voltron, aren’t you?”

Allura narrows her eyes. She nods almost imperceptibly. Some of the tension seems to leave his shoulders.

“I tore up Sendak’s cruiser to help you. I swear. I want to help,” he repeats.

Gears turn in Allura’s head. This is the rogue pilot, then. What drove him to this? A trap set by Sendak? His own interests, like wealth or firepower? Hunger for justice? That seems the least likely of them all.

Allura closes the distance between them in a bound, bayard shifting to a staff.

“Is that so?” she asks, knowing better than to trust him, because look where trusting galra had gotten her. “I don’t believe you.”

So she strikes.

* * *

Keith Kogane wakes for the second time that quintant the same way he woke up the first: with a skull-splitting migraine.

He opens his eyes, hisses in pain, and snaps them shut again, digging the heels of his palms into the sockets. The light here—it’s blue and bright and burning. _Here._ Where is he? What time is it even? He strains to remember the last thing he did. Woke up, went to morning drills, had breakfast… hmm.

Oh. _Right._

He remembers: the blaring alarms, the silent chaos of a fight, the pull in his gut and the whisper in his head that told him that _I am waiting, paladin_ , demanding he betray the empire out in the open.

(Not that he’d ever followed it in the first place.)

Most recently, Keith remembers being knocked in the head by a ~~beautiful~~ alien, one who looked like the Champion, one from Voltron. He’s probably on one of Voltron’s ships, then.

More conscious now, he realizes he’s no longer in his armor, just his undersuit—but he’s also, like, not chained up or anything, and he’s lying on a cushion with a little give to it. Good and kind of weird. Definitely nicer than the empire’s cells. 

He cracks an eye open tentatively. The ceiling is silver and small and met by glass walls at the edges. His gaze drifts down and to the side. He’s in a cell in the back of an otherwise empty room, a room at the front of which is an open door. 

Five muffled voices drift in from down the hall, gradually increasing in volume. Keith’s ear twitches as he strains to make out what they’re saying. It’s a language, no, two languages he doesn’t recognize. His translator fizzles and stutters in his ear until they’re something comprehensible.

“—him out the airlock,” someone is saying, shrill.

“I wish the same, but I _must_ have answers,” replies the girl from before, in a different language than the first speaker.

“Maybe after that, then?”

The girl appears in the doorway, followed by four others who look like the same species. Keith sits up and shifts to face them.

“Maybe after this,” she says.

She approaches him. The others hang back, suddenly quiet, nervous. They wear green, yellow, blue, and black and white armor. (Maybe to match their lions? Keith wonders if that was something they’d coordinated. _Wait_ , the one in black is—)

The girl halts right in front of the glass.

This is the first time Keith’s gotten a good look at her. A white cloud of hair has been pulled back in a bun. Crescents the others don’t have mark her cheeks, and she wears a shining gold tiara and armor accented in red.

She doesn’t look too happy to see him.

(But if he were her, he probably wouldn’t be either.)

“I am Princess Allura,” she says to him in softly accented Galran, voice hard, ice-cold, muffled only a little by the glass. “Of Planet Altea.”

Keith blinks. Allura of Altea? Princess Allura and her planet were destroyed by Zarkon ten thousand decaphoebs ago. How can she be here?

“I demand an explanation.”

He crosses his arms and sinks back against the wall. “For?” 

“‘For?’ I think it’s obvious! You attacked your own cruiser and stole my ship. How and why?”

He notices that her face looks puffy, and there are bags under her eyes tinted red, which means she was probably crying, and now she has to talk to him. She’s watching him, waiting, and the other aliens are also all looking at him, five pairs of eyes makes ten, and he feels naked in his undersuit and without his knife. He wishes he were somewhere else, thinks that she does, too.

“Um,” he begins lamely. “You guys with the lions looked like you could use some help fighting Sendak. Like you really needed it. I—” 

_was planted as a spy to help tear down the empire, so it was only a matter of time until I’d be outed anyway._ But he can’t say that, not without inviting questions about the Blade that he won’t, can’t answer. He’ll protect its secrets at all costs.

“We were doing just fine without you!” the guy in blue says.

“Continue,” Allura says flatly, ignoring him.

“I wasn’t loyal to the empire. I figured I should help you. It was like... the ship was calling me.” 

“The ship?”

“The red lion.”

Allura inhales sharply. “How?”

“I had a dream about it.”

Several dreams over the course of the past two movements, actually.

“Explain.”

“It happened this morning.”

_Keith stood in the dark on a field of stars, lost somewhere in the abyss between time and space._

_He was weighed down and weightless, tethered to an unseen plane by gravity without mass. When he inhaled, the air came in dry and cool, not unlike a tundra. Keith looked down at his hands. Constellations twinkled across his palms, visible even through layers of Marmora armor, skin, flesh, and bone._

_He glanced over his shoulder, turned the other way, sought anything and found nothing._

_“Uh, is anyone there?” he called out._

_A warm breeze ghosted the back of his neck. He spun to face it and found a crimson-coated lion three times his height staring him down with eyes blazing yellow-gold._

_Just as he opened his mouth to shout, the stars winked out, and he knew fire._

_Keith had never been in a forest, but he’d learned what they looked like from pictures. Flames washed over the trees of this one and the skeletons of dwellings, orange tongues licking at the branches hungrily, devouring all, popping, frames of hovels blackening and dissolving into ash. Pots and pans laid scattered around a stone circle in the center of the clearing, forgotten._

_An four-eyed alien from a species Keith didn’t recognize cried out in fear as it ran towards him. He moved to evade, but he was too slow, like he was swimming in syrup, and the alien crashed into him with a jolt._

_He was suddenly on the astral plane again, breathing hard, breathing nothing because there was no air on the field of stars, staring into the big quintessence-gold eyes of a beast that was only legend in more ways than one._

_“Why—”_

_Keith crouched at the edge of a circle of stones. Fire crackled in the center, over which he turned a spit skewered through something small and naked and four-legged. The flames illuminated a mural on a stone wall, strange creatures drawn out in flowing russet and charcoal strokes. Someone put their hand over his. Both were the wrong color._ No _, said the owner of the hand._ Like this. __

_Keith knelt in front of the lion. Its eyes bored deep into him, lighting up all the dark places and leaving his insides raw._

_Keith peered over the edge of a volcano, into a gaping pit. Magma boiled, surface bubbling, popping. Hot wind tousled his hair._

_The lion’s eyes burned._

_A bomb went off. A blade was hammered, white-hot over a forge. A city turned to dust. An omelette fried on a skillet._

_The lion’s eyes were gold. Something low and deep thrummed in the back of Keith’s head, louder, more urgently, hammering painfully against the inside of his skull, filling up the void so densely it was almost tangible._

_“What do you want?” Keith shouted. He couldn’t hear his own voice._

_The lion loomed above._

_”Find me.”_

Allura’s face is carefully blank. She opens her mouth, shuts it, grimaces, turns on her heel, and storms out of the room. 

“Princess?” calls the Champion, chasing after her.

Only three pairs of eyes watching him now. Keith stares back. They seem somewhere between nervous and angry and confused, and they all look to be about his age—the one in green maybe a little younger—but it’s hard to tell with aliens. (Sometimes you kneel down and go _”Hey, little guy”_ to an alien, and then they turn out to be an adult three times your age.

...okay, it had only happened once, but Keith still kicks himself for it.)

Are these really the paladins he’s thrown his lot in with? He gets the sinking feeling that he’s made a big mistake. He’s in a cell, with no way to contact the Blade, with a target on his back in the eyes of the empire, in a ship with an even bigger one.

This sucks.

At least they’re not under attack right now. Somehow. Maybe the paladins were able to defeat Sendak after he attacked his cruiser? Doubtful, based on what Keith had seen of them fighting. But what other reason would there be? Maybe someone else had intervened, but then— 

“So are you, like, a furry or something?” says the one in blue, tapping on the glass before yelping when the guy in yellow elbows him.

Keith bristles.

“ _Lance_ ,” Yellow hisses. 

“Hey! Why’d you tell him my name?”

Keith doesn’t know what a “furry” is, but it doesn’t sound good. 

(And he doesn’t have fur?) 

“No, I’m not.”

The one in green rolls his eyes. “Don’t ask dumb questions, Lance.” He turns to Keith. “Have you seen my family? My dad and brother?”

“Why are you trusting him? He’s not gonna tell you anything.”

“I’m not trusting him,” Green snaps. “I want answers, just like the Princess.”

“He’ll probably just lie to you like he lied to her,” Lance mutters.

Keith squints, looking Green up and down. Pale, brown hair… “I might have seen them? I think there were a couple of other…” He trails off. He’d thought these people were Alteans, but he would’ve heard about it if Sendak had had an _Altean_ in his arena. And they had funny round ears. “What are you guys called?”

“Humans,” Yellow supplies.

“...humans that were brought in with the Champion.”

“The Champion?” Lance asks.

“Your friend with the scar? That’s what—” Keith swallows. “That’s what the prisoners called him. He beat everyone they made him fight in Sendak’s arena.”

“And I’m sure _you_ helped them with that.”

Keith looks away, anywhere but at the three of them. “I wasn’t the one of the ones who made him fight. I did a couple of shifts guarding the cells at the arena. Sometimes I had to watch the matches. I was ordered to. I never wanted it.”

“You didn’t want to do it, huh? You—”

“When was the last time you saw my family?” Green interjects, irritated.

“Six or seven movements ago? I saw them all come onto the ship, and I saw the Champion in the arena. I don’t know what happened to your dad, but there was a rumor the Champion attacked your brother before he disappeared.”

The trio’s eyes go wide. “Shiro attacked Matt?” Green says, clenching his fists. “You’re lying.”

“I’m _not_.” He tries and fails to prevent irritation from creeping into his voice. “It’s just what I heard.”

“That must be fake,” Yellow says. “Shiro would never.”

Keith doesn’t know what to say. It might be true, it might not be. He just hopes this Shiro won’t be as bloodthirsty on this ship as he was in the arena.

“Yeah, no way! Shiro’s too much of a good guy for that. He’s, like, a hero,” Lance says. 

“What’s a movement?” Green asks.

Keith frowns. “It’s thirty quintants... how do you not know that?”

Before Green can ask what a quintant is, Yellow replies, “Nobody has ever been outside of our solar system before us. Well, uh, I guess Shiro and Pidge’s family have, but otherwise—we’re it.”

Pidge. Must be the green one. It’s Shiro, Pidge, Lance, Allura, and whatever this guy’s name is. Keith is tempted to ask, but then he’d probably ask for his, and he’d have to tell them his galra name, and Keith gets the feeling that that would make everything worse. Besides, they’re not his friends. Not enemies, maybe, but not even allies either.

Introductions can wait for later, if ever.

“Oh. You’re primitive,” Keith says. He regrets it immediately. “Sorry.”

“Gee, thanks,” Yellow says.

“At least we haven’t been out conquering the universe,” says Lance.

Keith doesn’t have an answer for that.

* * *

Allura slumps against the base of her father’s hologram. Between the shock after waking up, the retrieval of the red lion, and opening a wormhole to escape Sendak, she’s exhausted. 

“I don’t understand,” she whispers again. “I thought it would be me. I’ve always wanted to be a paladin, since I was a little girl. I—I want to be like you, Father.”

“I know,” says his ghost. “And I’m sorry.”

Allura looks up at him with wide, wet eyes.

“How can you be sorry? Voltron is your legacy. It’s my duty to—”

“I was flawed, Allura.” He sighs. “I wish I’d made that clear to you before I died. You must forge your own path. If you do, you will achieve what I never could.”

“What?”

“Freedom for the universe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bet you guys thought i'd abandoned this fic huh? surprise!
> 
> this chapter was meant to be longer but i decided this was a better stopping point than my original one... anyway s7 and s8 sucked and i have every intention of finishing this fic at some point and giving keith & allura (esp allura!!) the happy ending i've had planned for this fic for. idk probably six months at this point
> 
> next chapter is mostly keith. see you all then! thanks 4 reading


	4. azimuth (part 2)

Keith stares at the wall.

He’s been staring at the wall for vargas, or at least what feels like it. Isn’t like there’s much else to do. He’d already come up with the bright idea of doing push-ups before realizing that’d just leave him sweaty and unable to shower for… however long. With “exercise” crossed off the list, he’s left to sit on the cot and think. 

Maybe he needs to make a plan. That’s what Kolivan would want him to do.

Or he could just wing it. He knows he needs to get out of this cell and contact Kolivan. He’ll figure it out how to make that happen as he goes. It’s not like he knows much else. Not how to get the cell door open, not the layout of the castle, and pretty much nothing about humans or Alteans. 

Someone knocks on the door of the room, catching him by surprise. Keith feels a twinge of disappointment in himself. He should’ve paid better attention to his surroundings.

A series of clicking noises emanates from the door. It cracks open. A little more. Yellow enters stiffly, a tray in hand.

Keith turns back to the wall and pretends not to notice him. Keith can say hello or something to, strategically, break down some of the tension between the two of them, oooor he can act like Yellow isn’t there and hope he’ll go away quickly.

He’s never been good with people. In the empire, he faded into the background and collected information unnoticed. He gets the feeling that won’t fly if he wants to work with the paladins.

Yellow approaches. He clears his throat too loudly.

“I have food.”

Keith waits.

“At least, I think it’s food. It’s like, gooey. It’s food goo. That’s what the princess said. I hope you can eat that. Or is it an Altean thing? Well, I guess we—“

“Thanks,” Keith says, hoping to cut him off before he dissolves into a nervous wreck.

In Keith’s peripheral vision, Yellow puts his hand on an opaque section of the wall. It beeps, and a little panel at the bottom opens up. Yellow crouches down to slide the tray in; it scrapes the floor, the sound grating on Keith’s ears. The panel shuts. Yellow hurries out. The door slams behind him.

Keith eats his dinner on the floor, tray balanced on his lap. Altean food goo, he discovers, is much sweeter than the kind provided on imperial ships. _Or maybe,_ Keith thinks, sucking grimly on a straw jammed haphazardly into a water packet, _it’s just the difference between food for paladins of Voltron and food for imperial cannon fodder._ Either way, though, it’s a little gross.

He leaves the tray in the corner and returns to the bed, curling up with his back to the glass wall. He flips to face the other way. Rolls back. Pulls up the thin, singular cover. Pushes it down. Sits up, takes a deep breath, and closes his eyes. Breathes again.

Not much more than a quintant could have passed in this cell, and he’s already bored out of his mind. When are they gonna let him out? Maybe they won’t. But no, they’ve _got_ to. He can pilot the red lion. They need that, and even if they didn’t, they still wouldn’t keep him here forever. They’d drop him off on some random planet, or kill him, or sell him to someone who’d sell him to the empire. He must have _some_ bounty on his head by now...

Keith doesn’t realize he’d drifted off again until more knocking snaps him awake. Yellow is back. Keith watches him slide a tray into his cell from the corner of his eye. Yellow moves to leave.

“Wait,” Keith calls. “Where are we?”

They must have fled Arus and the Javeeno system vargas ago, to somewhere the Alteans thought Sendak wouldn’t follow. (How _did_ they escape, anyway?)

“I actually… don’t know? I think we’re on the outskirts of the empire, past Arus.” 

Yellow frowns, like he isn’t sure he should have shared that. Then he shrugs. 

“I’m Hunk, by the way.”

“Oh,” Keith says, stupidly. “Uh—” How to make this sound like he wasn’t lying earlier? “My name isn’t Yurak. Well, it _is_ , but it’s also Keith. Keith Yurak Kogane. _Keith_.”

Hunk’s eyes go wide, and his jaw drops, and Keith isn’t sure what to make of it. Does he think Keith’s a liar now? Or did he think it was weird? The few who’d heard Keith’s name before were always surprised it wasn’t Galran, but it wasn’t like Hunk had been in space long enough to tell.

“Sorry I didn’t tell you earlier?”

“No—no, it’s not that. Nevermind,” Hunk says, shaking his head. “It’s nothing.”

Okay…?

Hunk looks Keith over for several ticks, like it isn’t nothing, brows scrunching tighter and tighter together, and exits just before they meet in the middle.

Hunk doesn’t return. The lights of the Castle dim. Keith falls asleep. He wakes up. Hunk brings him more food goo. Keith thinks. Hunk brings him more food goo. Keith ponders. Hunk brings him more food goo. No more words pass between the two of them, only tension and the occasional sideways glance. 

Some few vargas later, the door is opened again, except this time instead of by Hunk, it’s by the Champion—by _Shiro_ , whose face is unreadable.

Shiro commands Voltron; Keith stands to meet him, coming up maybe half a head shorter.

The last time they were this close, it was Keith who stood on the outside of the cell, Shiro within—except Shiro had crouched and barely paid Keith any attention while Keith evaluated him, picking him over in a search for what made him champion. He was shorter than most galra (Keith ~~hopefully~~ hasn’t had his last growth spurt yet), and weaker than all of them, and he had blunt teeth and no claws and poor hearing and skin that too easily split under a knife—yet he defeated every opponent he faced. What enabled something so delicate to be so capable of destruction?

Shiro judges now, and Keith imagines he’s already been found wanting.

“It’s Keith?”

It’s so strange to hear that name from someone else’s lips again that it takes a moment to register that Shiro expects an answer. Keith nods. Shiro’s expression tightens almost imperceptibly.

“You’re the Champion, right? You’re Shiro? Do you—do you remember me?” _From your cell? I guarded it. I kept you locked up. I know why I did it, but I’m sorry._

The silence stretches on a beat longer than seems necessary.

“No,” Shiro says dispassionately. “I watched you attack Sendak’s ship. We wouldn’t have been able to get away without you.” Shiro smiles. “Thank you.”

His voice carries no hint of hostility, sounding sincerely grateful where Keith had expected justified resentment, making Keith feel even guiltier than if Shiro had just been angry with him. He doesn’t deserve this seemingly-easy acceptance.

“Um... happy to help.”

Shiro smiles, eyes crinkling in a way that vaguely reminds Keith of Kolivan in his better moments. It’s... almost reassuring. Not quite.

“It’s time for you to leave.”

And there is it. They’ll kick him out or trade him for a bounty. No help will come. It’s one thing to be a spy, another to try to survive alone. On any habitable planet, he’ll be threatened or perceived as a threat by the native populations. Resold to the empire and he’ll end up as one of Haggar’s experiments, a fate worse than death.

Shiro glances at his face and must see his rising panic because he adds, “Your cell. You’ll be leaving your cell.” The side of his mouth twitches.

Keith’s thoughts grind to a halt. _Oh._

Shiro sets his hand on the same spot of the wall that Hunk had earlier, probably a scanner. It beeps, then Shiro taps something on the screen. _Click._ The cell door swings open untouched, and Shiro offers Keith a dark bundle of fabric. He takes it.

“Get changed,” Shiro says. “I’ll wait outside.”

 

Keith drapes his undersuit over his arm. He wears a black shirt, pants, and red and white boots, all of which had appeared too small at first but stretched to fit him. He guessed it made sense that a shapeshifting species would design one-size-fits all clothing. Wouldn’t be very practical to carry around extra outfits.

He wonders where they’d put his armor—and more importantly, where they’d put his knife. Had the princess thrown it out? He sure hopes not; besides the fact that he’d like to have some means of self-defense, he feels naked, vulnerable without it. It hasn’t left his side more than a few times in the five decaphoebs since his trial.

Shiro leads him along winding hallways the antithesis of any on imperial ships—silver and blue and cool and brightly-lit, though the sconces are already beginning to dim for the castle’s night cycle. The dust that rises up as they pass through reminds Keith that these corridors haven’t been traveled in millenia. He wrinkles his nose and tries not to sneeze.

“Where are we going?” he asks.

“The bridge. Allura requested that we meet in five doboshes.”

The princess again. Keith would bet his bottom GAC she wants to see him even less than he wants to see her, which is really saying something. He’s not about to hold it against her, but between the galra thing and the red lion thing, he figures things between them will always be awkward at best.

Keith and Shiro arrive last out of the paladins, Keith painfully aware of the others’ stares. In the center of the room, Allura stands tall on a dias, flanked by two short pillars, the cloud of hair cascading past her shoulders pearly white and iridescent against the black of space behind her. 

“Princess,” Shiro greets her.

“Shiro,” she says, inclining her head.

“The red lion’s choice is immutable,” she declares, “even if I think it a poor one.” She narrows her eyes and fixes her gaze on Keith. “Shiro has requested that I allow you to stay. As this wish comes from the black paladin, the head of Voltron, I will honor it.”

But she needs him whether Shiro wants him or not, Keith thinks. They can’t form Voltron without the red lion, and the red lion won’t fly without him. She even sort of acknowledged it. Allura’s just letting him know where he stands.

“You will have access to the communal areas, the training deck, and your room. Coran will later show you around as he did the others.” She pauses. “Do not make me regret this, Keith Kogane.”

“I won’t,” he says. A weak answer, so he adds, “I swear.”

Princess Allura watches him for several more ticks, longer than really necessary, and Keith gets the feeling she’s picking him into pieces, trying to see how he fits together. Keith waits for the other paladins to protest her declaration or just say anything at all. They don’t.

“Now,” she continues, addressing the group. “We must decide how to proceed from here.” 

Her hands glide across the tops of the pillars, and a million stars materialize in the air, glowing in groups of purple and blue.

“These are the fourth quadrant outskirts of the Galra Empire. And currently, we—“ She gestures to a sparse region at the edge of the hologram. “—Are _here_.” It expands, driving away most of the stars. Four planets swing around a lone sun, one too close, two too far from it for complex life. A tiny ship—the castle—drifts just outside the system’s outer debris cloud. “We wormholed away from Arus nearly two quintants ago.”

( _Wormholed._ That explained how they’d gotten away so easily. And here Keith had hoped they’d been able to hold off Sendak in battle.)

“Assuming Sendak still pursues us, as we must, he will arrive in approximately three quintants. We cannot flee forever. Planets must be liberated. We must be able to defend ourselves. We need Voltron.”

The other paladins exchange glances. It’s true that they need to form Voltron as soon as possible, but does she really expect that to happen within _three quintants_? All he shares with the other paladins is a goal, and he doubts the younger trio even really seen battle. No way.

“How’re we gonna form Voltron with _him_?” Lance says, tipping his head in Keith’s direction. Keith unwisely shoots him a glare.

“The better question is how you will form Voltron at all,” Allura says. She pauses. “I believe the answer will have to wait until morning. Paladins, please relax and get some sleep. Tomorrow will be… _challenging_.”

That sounds a little bit like a threat.

* * *

_Knock, knock._

“Come on, Mom, five more minutes,” Hunk mutters into his pillow.

_Knock knock knock._

“Hello?” he calls, sitting up from his bed.

The lights flicker on as the door opens to reveal Lance, sporting a creamy green face mask and loose blue pajamas. “Can I sleep in here? I—I’ve never slept by myself. I always had my siblings at home, or you, now that we’re—we were roommates at the Garrison, or…” he trails off, scratching the back of his head. “My room’s kinda lonely.”

“Yeah, man, come in,” Hunk says, suddenly grateful for the company. On an alien spaceship light years from Earth, Lance’s familiar presence manages to ease some of Hunk’s anxiety. “I don’t think there’s much room in my bed though, sorry. Maybe there's some extra pillows or something somewhere? Like in the dresser.”

“Let’s see,” Lance replies, pulling open a drawer. Nothing. He tries four more below it; two come up empty, but the third and fourth hold blankets that Lance tosses on the floor next to Hunk’s bed and pillows he arranges to sleep on. After that, he lies down, crosses his arms behind his head, and lets out a long, loud breath. The lights dim. Hunk settles down too.

“It’s been a long day, huh?” says Lance.

“It sure has.”

“We’re on an _alien spaceship_ , Hunk. That’s crazy. Am I crazy?”

“No,” Hunk says. “At least, I don’t think so. If you’re crazy, I’m crazy, and I don’t want to be crazy. But maybe that’d be better than actually being lost in space. It’s hard to know, I guess. Or maybe we’ll wake up, and this’ll all be like, indigestion.”

“Indigestion?”

“Yeah, a bad dream from getting sick from the cafeteria food at the Garrison. That stuff’s so freaking gross, dude. I don’t remember the last time I ate a good meal. It’s just been like, asparagus and unseasoned chicken and potatoes for months, and now it’s green alien goop. I dunno if that even counts as food.”

“Nah. Shit’s nasty,” Lance says dismissively. “Hey, what was up with Kogane? And then the alien—galra—Keith, he said his name was Kogane, too. What the hell is that?”

Hunk had nearly forgotten about that. If his brain is an egg, the last day and a half had deep fried it, and after he’d gotten over the initial shock and brief reminder during the team meeting, the Kogane thing had been buried beneath more pressing concerns he needed to agonize over, like the alien warlord Allura said was hot on Voltron’s proverbial heels.

“I have no idea, Lance. Maybe it’s just one of those universal names, like Yuri or Lee or something. There’s no way him and Commander K are, like, related.” Hunk yawns.

“How do _you_ know that? They could totally be related.”

“Well, maybe I don’t. But think about it,” he reasons. Two nights ago, he’d laid awake beneath Lance’s bunk; tonight, it’s a ceiling of nameless metal. “We’re like, a bajillion galaxies away from Earth, where Kogane is, and Keith is here—” just a couple rooms down, possibly but hopefully not plotting to kill them all in their sleep, “—which means he’s also a bajillion galaxies away from Kogane. What’re the chances of them even meeting, much less being related? Basically zero. Also, Keith’s _purple_ and Commander Kogane is, uh, _not_ , which I think says a lot more than anything else.”

Lance hums. He seems to consider it. “Maybe.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“Are you?”

“...I guess not. Nothing has made sense since we snuck out of our rooms the other night. Why would this have to?”

Lance grunts affirmation.

“Feels like _something_ should, though,” Hunk murmurs, sleep tugging at his mind. He lets it drag him under.

* * *

“Sleep well, Number Two,” Coran says, waving from just outside Keith’s door.

“Good night,” Keith says, shutting it. A long series of clicks follows the action. He tries to open it again; no luck. 

So they’ve locked him in for the night. Now he understands why Coran insisted on walking him back to his room after the tour of the castle (with which Coran accompanied long stories about his youth that more-or-less all ran together. If he noticed the number of times Keith had said yes to open-ended questions, he chose not to say anything). Fine.

Keith showers for the first time in days, gags on ancient Altean toothpaste, puts his shirt and boots and pants back on, and crawls into bed, wishing he had his knife to stash under his pillow. He hasn’t slept without it in years.

The room is cold—much colder than his quarters back on Sendak’s ship. His hair still soaks the pillow case. He shivers.

Keith gets up to dig around in the drawers, where he finds a couple of black undersuits, red pajamas, pillows, and a set of blankets. 

He crawls back into bed a few moments later, burying himself under a newfound pile of fleece. He rolls to his side.

 _A paladin, huh._ He hadn’t really thought about it. Like, okay, the idea is basically inherent to the “piloting the red lion” thing, but it hasn’t… sunk in.

Keith tries to imagine what that would be like. Will he and the others be friends? Hmm. No, being a paladin makes him part of a team—and nothing else. It doesn't matter if they can’t be _friends_. He—they just have to complete the mission: destroy the empire. Nothing new. He’d been the outsider before, had far worse teammates. He’ll find a way to make it work.

Keith rolls to his other side.

* * *

Allura examines her ten-thousand-year-old face in her mirror for not the first time since she’s woken up. Vanity doesn’t drive her to it; it’s something more like fear, slow and cold, creeping under the surface like a second skin and leaching down into her bones.

 _Altea and ten thousand years lost._ When she’s on her ship, and she’s talking to the paladins, preparing the castle, piloting, dealing with the galra, she can deal with it. She can let herself be distracted, ignore the weight of her shame for the sin of trying to forget—but she doesn’t want to forget, not really, no, what she wants more than anything else is to wake up from this nightmare and have it all back.

After the other paladins had gone their rooms for the night, she’d been alone with Coran again, watching the stars. He’d told her to get some sleep, so she’d left the bridge, and she’d wandered through the castle, passing the elevators, the training room, the ballroom, the swimming pool, through its high-ceilinged halls where phantoms lurked. Her footsteps had echoed, a steady chant in her ear reminding her that she was _alone, alone, alone._ Her hand had hovered over the door to the chamber where her father’s AI waited, where his ghost was suspended in the limbo between one and oh. She’d swallowed hard and spun around on her heel, because tomorrow would be busy, and to mourn was the first luxury she could not afford.

She’d gone to look in the mirror instead of going to sleep. Maybe if she faced her fear, she’d be able to.

Disconnect. 

Allura watches her reflection’s mouth open, poke at its cheeks, feel its flesh, count its teeth. She leans in close and its pupils grow wide and pink; she leans out and sees them shrink, the surrounding blue muscle contracting.

Maybe it was ten thousand decaphoebs in a cryopod that did this to her, makes her feel in the late hours like a stranger in her own body.

Maybe not.

She coughs at the dust filling her nostrils when she crashes into bed, so she switches out the sheets for a set only half as dusty and settles in. She struggles to remember the last time she’d had to change her own sheets. It must have been a long, long time ago.

She hopes she hasn’t made a grave mistake in letting the galra out. Shiro had suggested, no, _insisted_ on it as the black paladin. He should know as well as she does that galra can’t be trusted, and yet he’d done it anyway, leaving her cross with his disrespect for her perspective and for her role as the lions’ guardian.

But it wasn’t like he could _make_ her do anything, order her around on her own ship. 

Deep down, she knows why she relented, and it’s not because of Shiro.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the plot is rly gonna get going next chapter... see u then and thank u for reading! xx


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